The poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, wrote, “In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” This year, Colorado’s unusually warm fall weather seems to have caused more than one young man’s fancy to lightly turn to thoughts of free speech.

Since late July, a small group of faithful congregants has been gathering every weekday in front of Denver’s Lindsey-Flanigan courthouse to hand out jury nullification literature and express their unbridled contempt for law enforcement. A while back, a large banner appeared over their encampment proclaiming, “&#*%!@! cops.”

This sweeping statement, unqualified by any adjective like “brutal,” “corrupt” or “incompetent,” prompts inquiring minds to want to know the target of this sentiment. Is it directed towards the valiant first responders at the Aurora theater shooting, who, in the absence of ambulances, transported the wounded to area hospitals in their squad cars? Or perhaps it’s aimed at the intrepid detectives who solved the Fero’s Bar and Grill murders, where five innocent people were viciously stabbed and then set afire. Surely they don’t mean to impugn the crack Denver Cold Case squad, responsible for solving rapes and murders years and sometimes decades old.

Notice that however emphatic these protesters may be, they offer no alternative to a professional police force. No doubt if every peace officer in this country were decommissioned tomorrow, criminals would be ecstatic. Their jobs just got a whole lot easier. But what about the good citizens, the people who work, go to school, raise families and run businesses? Are they to raise their own well-run militias for protection, or are they expected to simply tolerate a lawless society, where criminals wreak havoc with impunity?

Acrimony toward law enforcement is nothing new in this country. Cornelius Hogeboom was one of its first victims. On Oct. 22, 1791, he was the sheriff in Columbia County, N.Y. Back then, the Anti-Rent Movement was raging. Tenant farmers were violently protesting the payment of rent to a few wealthy landowners. Sheriff Hogeboom was charged with evicting the inhabitants of a farm for not paying rent. While engaged in this dangerous duty, he was ambushed and killed by enraged Anti-Renters, becoming the first American law enforcement officer to die in the line of duty.

Ironically, despite the widespread, frenzied anti-law enforcement sentiment prevalent today, even a brief reading of history shows that police work has actually evolved, progressed and improved significantly over the decades. This country has come a long way since Colonial times, when cities made do with a “watch” composed of volunteers from the community, who often slept or drank on duty. Politics are no longer inextricably intertwined with police work, as was the case in the 1800s when politicians hired policemen to help them stay in office rather than give the slightest consideration to who was the most qualified individual for the job.

At the same time, what has not evolved, progressed or improved is the behavior of criminal suspects whom police are charged with apprehending. Even as anti-police sentiment rises to a fever pitch, suspected lawbreakers grow ever more aggressive, their behavior increasingly out of control: pointing guns at officers, physically assaulting them, going for their weapons, trying to run them over in cars.

Peace and prosperity simply cannot exist in the absence of laws passed by duly elected legislators and enforced by appointed peacekeepers. Regular citizens want predatory criminals captured, off the streets, and they want to be able to call on a professional police force to do that task rather than relying on the Avengers, the X-Men or the Justice League of America.

More in Opinion

If you care about fishing or boating Colorado’s rivers, this ongoing legal case should have relevance for you. Roger Hill is a 76-year-old Coloradan who likes to fish while standing on the bed of a stream. One of his favorite spots is a stretch of the Arkansas River below Salida.

With over 4 million Coloradans experiencing drought conditions and the largest coverage of extreme drought our state has seen since 2013, most of us are focused not on an excess of rain and flooding, but its absence.

Colorado’s iconic mountain ranges, farms and ranchlands, parks, rivers and open spaces are an undeniable part of our shared identity as Coloradans. We live in a state where three in four residents consider themselves conservationists, and 87% understand that Colorado’s open lands and outdoor lifestyle give the state an economic advantage.

It’s a perfect storyline for a TV series that peels away the veneer of post-racial Ivy League pretensions to see the anxieties raging barely beneath the surface among college students and their neurotic helicopter parents.